Education

Research Areas and Descriptors

Acoustics and Dynamics and Mechanics of Materials: Structural health monitoring, phononic and periodic meta-materials, vibration and noise control, wave propagation in solids, and mechanics of cellular and structured materials

Background

Massimo Ruzzene joined Georgia Tech in 2002 as an assistant professor of Aerospace Engineering. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, he was a post doctoral fellow and an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. His background is in the general areas of solid mechanics, structural dynamics and wave propagation. During his academic career, he has worked on structural system identification with application to traffic loaded bridges, on passive and active vibration and noise control techniques, on the mechanics of cellular/structured materials, and on structural health monitoring. He has participated in various research projects funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army Research Office, the Office of Naval Research, NASA, the U.S. Army, TRW Corporation, and the National Science Foundation.

Research

Dr. Ruzzene's current research activities emphasize the detection and analysis of guided ultrasonic waves for structural health assessment. The detection of propagating ultrasonic waves, together with the application of Scanning Laser Vibrometry for full wave-field measurement, are used to develop novel damage detection techniques which are based on the application of filtering techniques in the frequency/wave number space. The goal of these techniques is to separate the contribution of damage from the overall response of the structure, thus highlighting its presence and location.

Another area of investigation considers the application of periodic structural lattices for the design of novel acoustic meta-materials and waveguides. This class of structural assemblies features unique design flexibility which allows tailoring their mechanical behavior through the proper selection of the unit cell topology. Unique features such as directional behavior and bandgap properties are exploited for acoustic wave guiding, and for the design of novel actuators with frequency dependent directivity. Such properties are also investigated in the presence of nonlinear material behavior, which may be exploited to further enhance the functionality of acoustic meta-materials and to generate novel unique properties uniquely associated with nonlinear interactions.